More of Savant's Commentaries

Conditions are largely different here than in Europe. Socialists and even Labor Party types are completely marginal here. So, caution is advised. Still, a pointed critique of liberal Democrats must be maintained. Especially those "liberal " Dems who are more centrist than anything else. But we shouldn't talk as if there's no difference between liberal Democrats and increasingly fascistic Republicans. I was attracted to the strategy suggested in 2012 by Noam Chomsky: In any state in which Mitt Romney hasn't even a prayer of winning, maybe some folk ought to vote Green or other alternatives. Where the Republicans could win if you don't pull out all the stops, by all means vote Obama. Actually, I voted for Obama even though Romney hadn't a prayer of winning Maryland. I wanted the margin of Mit Romney's defeat to be as large as possible. I guess I was pissed by the 47% comment. Ann coulter talking about how "OUR Blacks are better than THEIR Blacks", and her lame attempts to defend those statements made me angrier. I will support Bernie Sanders if he runs. And there's a woman whose name escapes me, a women who seems progressive, whom some want to run for the presidency. You've mentioned her before but her name escapes me now. If she runs I will vote for her. If she runs in the primaries against Bernie Sanders???? Well, I will have to wait and see. For me at present, the critical thing is to form a Movement. What if there had been an Occupy Movement within a few months of Obama taking office, or just prior? Again, we forget that there was a militant labor movement in progress when FDR took office. Rosa Parks and Montgomery had jumpstarted the Black freedom movement (which help inspire other movements) BEFORE Kennedy or Johnson took office. I believe (not sure) that the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina started around January or February of 1960. This had to have been BEFORE Kennedy took office. Even if my dates are wrong the YEAR is right. The Freedom Rides in 1961. What was missing in 2008 was a progressive mass movement. Perhaps with a progressive wind at his back we might have seen a different Obama, the Obama we hoped we were voting for. Without popular "street heat" even an FDR might have been just another politician with (like Obama decades later) a few tinkling reforms here or there, but little of substance.

 -Savant

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 One more thing about this. Attai's language here actually seems to derive from the way in which things are often talked about in the Black community itself. In his zealous solidarity with our cause he sometimes adopts our rhetoric. When he told Barros that he heard Black people referring to the president as "Oreobama " that pretty much is true....though Blacks disappointed with Obama don't usually say that outsider own company. And it's not the kind of thing you expect a white person--even very progressive to say. Blacks often say of police that they're Klansmen with badges. That is precisely what my mother said in the aftermath of the recent killings of Brown, Garner, Tamir Rice and others. My uncle Oscar, who fought at Normandy, called the cops who brutalized Rodney King "California Nazis". And when the all white jury exonerated the cops, Uncle Oscar called them "a Nazi/Klan court." I have on occasion been so angry at some incident of police violence (like the beating of an elderly church woman in my old neighborhood) that I said "The Klan has traded in its sheets for police uniforms and badges." Now rarely are such statements meant LITERALLY. And people do not usually mean that each and every policeman is a raving mad racist. But a pattern of violence against the community is regarded as racist regardless of the particular personality or race of this or that individual cop. It is the police as an INSTITUTION that is the issue. That is why even the increase of Black police officers, let alone Latin or Asian ones, are often seen to matter little. The institution is dysfunctional and operates in a racist manner. And on that note, I should also point out what most Blacks know: Black cops often operate the same way as white cops. In fact, in order to "prove" themselves as members of the club, some blak cops may even be MORE brutal. This was seen in South Africa as well where, by about the mid to late 80s, perhaps 30%--40% of the police were Black; but they operated violently in defense of the same apartheid system. To take a more extreme example, the Kapos (though Jewish) were often among the most feared guards among Jewish captives of the Nazi regime. Why, racism is a SYSTEM, not simply a matter of prejudices and attitudes. So are all forms of oppression.

 -Savant

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 The statistics, which have themselves been critiqued, wouldn't prove any such thing even if those stats were of unquestionable reliability. Racial characteristics cannot be proven. Indeed race itself cannot be proven. And what of the news? It is interesting how you right wing white racists who are so skeptical of the so-called "liberal media" can so gullibly swallow anything you receive from that media when it seems to support your racism. No doubt you've not even heard that reporting of crime INCREASED even as crime itself DECREASED. Moreover, studies seem to indicate the PERCEPTIONS of Black crime commonly exceeds even the skewed statistics you've been fed. But it's interesting to see that you still believe in the "liberal " media after all.

 -Savant

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 I've seen nothing that he has written which justifies your interpretation. In fact, his comment in the thread about the NYC cops killed recently he says that this kind of street justice is NOT what we need. At most he might say that police abuse helps precipitate that kind of irrational violence. Attai may at times romanticize Black folk, and even at times make posts that are virtually "ultra left." But he's not so dumb as to actually promote criminality. But at least on one point he would concur with me that, as Insect insightfully put it, "oppression begets dysfunction" --however much both he and Barros hate to agree on anything. LOL! -Savant


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 So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

 -Savant

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 An interesting thing is happening in Baltimore. The growth of the Latin population, mostly poor, has led to the emergence of a new poor or proletariat. Over the past 10+ years there have been militant labor actions and strikes pitting Black and Brown and some white poor against their bosses. There were strikes at Johns Hopkins University, Camden Yards and at some of the larger hotels near the inner harbor. In each instance reactionaries--mos tly white, but also Black and Brown--tried to pit Black nd Latin workers against each other, and thereby break the strike. In each case, the reactionaries FAILED. In each case, the workers won. When I look at this, at the Occupy Movement of a few years ago, and now the massive multiracial Movement against police brutality, I think: "we can win this battle!" In Bobby Seale's words we must "Seize the Time!". A blade in the throat of oppression!!! -Savant

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 But you know, a good number of psychological studies of racist seem to reveal a weird obsession, often erotic or homoerotic, on the part of racists to the objects of their racial disdain. Adorno seems to find this in his studies in THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY, Sartre notices this among many anti-semites in his La Question Juive. This same kind of obsession has been noted in the USA for a long time. Also, a good number of psychologists whom I happen to know also say that homophobia, at least when it becomes extreme or militant, usually is a sign that the homophobe has his OWN ISSUES with homosexuality. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Right wingers probably contain more hidden or subconsciously gay homophobe than does any other demographic. Like those right wing Republicans always ranting and raving about gays and then getting caught themselves doing the nasty with some guy (or even under age page boy). And I suspect that if we met some of those women, men and boys whom Miss gar gar claims to have impressed, they would probably tell us that there's nothing "gargantos " about him. -Savant

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What more interesting is that you white racists like to trot out the same tired old statistics which have been critiqued by scholars as skewed an inflated. I mentioned just one author, Lisa Bloom, who pointed out this fact in a book of hers. I mentioned it to Go Blue among others. But somehow you seem not to notice evidence you don't like. If you keep trotting out statistics whose reliability has been questioned by SCHOLARS studying these matters, and don't even attempt an argument to defend those statistics, then you're guilty of the petitio principii fallacy, assuming that which you need to prove or argue for. Numbers don't tell you how they were arrived at. And even assuming the numbers were correct, they don't tell you how to INTERPRET them. -Savant

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 This time the reservation isn't just for Native Americans. Moreover, the explosion of the prison populations and police violence are due not only to racism, but also to growing economic inequality. Not surprising to me. In the AA intellectual and political traditions it has been commonly perceived that economic and racial injustice are intimately interwoven. But the majority of whites cannot escape economic injustice even if that injustice is more intense in communities of color. By the way, there's an interesting article in AlterNet.org by Lestor Leopold entitled "How Runaway Economic Inequality and Racism are Linked to Police Killings." I think it appeared on December 15, my mother's birthday. -Savant ________________

Even if they come from the FBI. As for Black communities most residents know that the police do little anyway when it comes to crime. Indeed, cops and criminals often work hand-in-hand. Dick Gregory was right when he said that every KID in the ghetto knows who the dope dealers are, and also the cops who work with them. What James Baldwin wrote in the 1960s about cops in Harlem remains true even in 2014 in black communities throughout America. "Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality. I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once." (NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, p. 62). So have I, brother Baldwin. So have I. The incessant harassment and abuse falling short of murder on TV falls upon Blacks from wealthy entertainers, to middle class professionals and all way down to the most destitute of les miserable in the ghettoes of America. You should get down on your KNEES and kiss my people's feet for holding primarily to NONVIOLENT means to resist the police terror. And by the way, Dr. King's father named him Martin whether the authorities got it right or no. Hence his name was Martin, and that's the end of it.
 -Savant


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So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

-Savant

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 Now your reply to his comments about the NYC mayor was at least relevant, though the issue is a bit complicated. An issue that has plagued the left (at least in capitalistic republics) for decades. But this comment is waaay below that level, and more akin to what we'd expect from the brain dead reactionaries. AS you know, I also believe that Obama's progressivism has proven to be more fluff than substance, though he's preferable to the protofascist Republicans. I will be observing di Blasio who I hope (as I once hoped of Obama) that he'd be at least a fighting liberal. (I'm not dumb enough to expect him to be Eugene V. Debs any more than I expected Obama to be Paul Robeson). If I've a problem with Attai's critique, it's not that I think he's completely wrong. But I fear he pushes the critique to he point of obscuring distinctions between protofascist reactionaries of the Republican party, and centrists (who are just barely liberal) of he Democratic party. That can be dangerous. There is a difference between Obama's lame reaction to police atrocities and to racism, and the outright racist demoninzation of communities of color by the right. There's a difference between di Blasio's "can't we all get along attitude" and those who would like to unleash the military against the Black community if they could. And what should we actually be doing? We must resist the Right, but cannot simply surrender to the unreliable leadership of centrist liberals. So, it is a difficult matter.

 -Savant

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 It is YOU who look through a white racial lens while pretending to look through a non-racial lens. The pretense of colorblindness or postraciality is often the more fashionable guise in which white racism expresses itself. The fact remains that the police, the armed enforcers of the status quo, are capable of repressing anyone, and sometimes do slay people of any and all races and ethnicities. Partly, this is because the status quo is a capitalist class society as well as a racist one. The cops protect that. But the fact still remains that the slayings of Black and Brown youth by fascist pigs cops are far greater in proportion than the slaying of white youths. Just as fascists in an anti-Semitic society may kill other people than Jews, but kill Jews in greater proportion, in a white racist capitalist regime like the USA, cops kill all kinds of people, but Blacks and (increasingly Latins) more than others. Even members of the privileged classes in communities of color suffer abuses at the hands of the police which their class equivalents in white America would find unbelievable. But don't worry. The repression cannot be restricted to Black and Brown communities. It will knock at your door soon enough.

 -Savant

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Only mentally deranged Black men hate our sisters, And I don't think most of us are that whacked out. Sisters--most of them--have had our backs over the past 400+ years. It is only well and fitting that we have their backs also. Look at those demonstrations in support of the black male victims and families of victims of police killings. You will see Black women there in the thousands and tens of thousands. We need to be there for them as well. That's what community is about, and that's what it means to be a MAN, not a punk.

-Savant

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 First of all, many Black women as well as men--the majority if surveys are revealing--believe , Know, that racism is rampant in American society. And in America, capitalism and racism are intricately interwoven. Always have been. And if it is paranoid to believe that racial oppression is REAL in America today, then it is no mere "black male" paranoia. Nor even Black male/Black female paranoia. It is a belief widespread among Latinos as well. Moreover, what you call paranoia is shared by the United Nation's Commission on Racism, Amnesty International, ACLU, and numerous scholars (many of them actually white). Again, T-BOZ ought to at least read something above the level of a text message. As you are personally detached from the experiences of most Black people, I could provide you with a bibliography which you might read before posting again. Start with THE RACIAL CONTRACT, or Ezorsky's RACISM AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. Read any number of books by Manning Marable, or Angela Y. Davis---her more recent ones, in particular (e.g. ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE, or THE NATURE OF FREEDOM AND OTHER DIFFICULT DIALOGUES). Read MIchelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW. Nothing personal, but only right wingers (who are usually racist themselves) and simpletons go around saying that racial oppression no longer exists in America. The WHOLE WORLD as well as the vast majority of Black people know that racism is still rampant. And by racism we don't mean only prejudice, the institutionalized racism; racism as organized privileging of one group to the disadvantage of others. -Savant ______________

 Yes indeed. The wave of protests against police terror against the Black community may offer an opening an be a beginning: seizing what Angela Davis calls "the historical moment." -Savant